Obvious
by Jacqueline Albright-Beckett
Summary: Charlie lures Cas out of his shell, and isn't surprised by what she finds.


Normally, Charlie despised spring cleaning. She'd rather dig out her own eyes with a melon baller than sift through the detritus in the various cardboard boxes she kept in her closet that simply moved whenever she did - she didn't know what was in those boxes and, at this point, she was a little wary of finding out.

Such was her hatred of cleaning that she hadn't been able to keep her face from falling when Dean had asked, ever so nicely, if she'd help them with a little project in the Bunker.

"We don't know what's in all the boxes," he'd said, "but no doubt some of it's actually useful. It'll go a lot faster if we had a hand."

She'd tried to think of a tactful way to say "I wish I could but I really don't want to," but then he'd flashed her his goddamn _I'm the big brother you never had and you know you're going to do it anyway_ smile and she'd found herself agreeing.

But these boxes weren't filled with old notebooks of angsty teenage poetry. Her reluctance had turned quickly to excitement at the thrill of discovery, an entire day had passed without her knowing, and now she was back again.

She was examining a deceptively heavy platter covered in hammered brass when she spotted movement out of the corner of her eye and she looked up.

"Oh. Hello," she said politely, even going so far as to take one earbud out. "You're Castiel, right?"

Of course it was Castiel; it could hardly have been anyone else. His recent...difficulties...with Heaven had necessitated a wardrobe change from the overcoat and suit that she'd read about, but everything else, right down to the squinting quizzical expression, was almost exactly as she'd imagined it.

"It's - it's just Cas, now." The man reached up to rub the back of his neck awkwardly. "And you are?"

"Charlie," she said, shifting the platter to her left hand to offer the right in a handshake. "I've...heard about you."

"Charlie," Cas said slowly, reaching out to take her hand as though not positive what to do with it. "Dean's mentioned you." He looked around. "Where is he? Or Sam?"

Charlie blinked, trying to reach back in her memory to a few hours ago. She'd been engrossed in a journal - handwritten in Sanskrit, of all things - and Sam had said something...

"Oh. Garth called them. Something needed taking care of in South Dakota. He said it shouldn't take more than a day or two, and asked if I could stay here and make sure you and Kevin both ate something, and that they're sorry they didn't take you but you haven't slept in three days so they didn't want to wake you up." She nodded, fairly certain that the information dump was complete.

Cas looked unimpressed but unsurprised at this knowledge. "I see." He cleared his throat. "What time is it?"

Charlie checked her iPod. "Eleven-thirty."

"Right." Running both hands vigorously through his hair, Cas gave her an embarrassed grin. "Um, what _day_ is it?"

"Wednesday," she replied, almost completely sure she was correct, unable to suppress her own answering grin at how stupidly adorable Cas looked with his hair standing on end. He was like a teddy bear dressed in a too-large tee shirt and jeans a bit long in the leg. Dean's clothes, she realized, and immediately hushed the thought because omg, how rude.

"Do you want breakfast? Or lunch, now, I guess, but it is still morning, so it could be breakfast," she said to cover her brain's ecstatic stutter. "Second breakfast? Elevensies?"

Cas stared at her blankly. "I...suppose?"

"Good." Charlie yanked the other earbud from her ear and shoved the wires into her pocket. "I'm famished."

She had, however, forgotten that she was at Chez Winchester, and was reminded as soon as she opened the refrigerator. She felt Cas lean over her shoulder to look in as well, and she turned her head to meet his amusingly unsurprised expression. Not a lot seemed to surprise Cas.

"Two tortillas, a pack of beer, and a lone pickle," she listed. "Now I see why they were worried about you starving." Shrugging, she shut the fridge. "I guess we're going out to eat."

Cas's eyebrows raised in surprise. "Out?"

"Yes. Out. Closest burger joint is about twenty minutes from here because this is the middle of freaking nowhere, but better than a pickle in a blanket." She looked down at Cas's bare feet. "You got shoes?"

Things seemed to be moving a bit quickly for Cas. "Yes?" he said, as though unsure of the answer.

"Good. I'll go get Kevin. Meet you at my car."

Kevin was wholly uninterested in anything that included showering, putting on clean clothes, or taking his eyes away from the stone tablet he'd been glued to ever since Charlie had been introduced to him. "I'll bring you something?" she promised. She wasn't positive he'd heard her, but if she put a bag of food next to him, he would probably eat it. That would have to be good enough.

* * *

Cas was standing with awkward nonchalance by her car, arms crossed and looking with interest through the windows at the fuzzy 20-sided dice hanging from her rearview mirror. He'd thrown a baggy flannel shirt on over the tee shirt in such a mirror image of Dean that she had to smile and shake her head as she unlocked the car.

Mutely puzzled, he watched as she plugged her iPod into the audio jack. "Is that what that's for?" he asked after a few moments. "Dean wouldn't answer me when I asked what it was in his car."

"His car has one?" Charlie asked in genuine surprise as she turned the key in the ignition. "I thought he was all about the vintage cassette tapes." She shrugged. "Yeah. It's for my tunes. Here." She tossed him the iPod. "Find something you want to listen to."

Cas looked as though he'd just been handed a Rubik's Cube of all one color. "I...don't know anything about music. Except what Dean listens to."

"Fair enough. Just put it on shuffle, then. It can surprise us." Charlie flashed him a grin as she pulled onto the dirt road that lead away from the Bunker.

It took Cas a moment to puzzle out the controls, but before the silence became awkward, the familiar opening chords of one of her often-played songs began to float from the speakers, and she grinned. "Excellent." She turned up the volume, glancing over to gauge Cas's reaction, and when he didn't look scandalized, took it a step further and began drumming the beat on the steering wheel.

"I can actually understand what they're saying," Cas said loudly after a few lines.

"This is a bit different from Dean's music," Charlie replied over the chorus, reaching out to turn down the volume. "He probably wouldn't be caught dead listening to this stuff."

"Why?" Cas's brow wrinkled. "It's - happy."

"Well," Charlie said, holding back a laugh at his assessment, "Dean is - his masculinity is very important to him. This genre of music is not known for its overabundance of masculinity."

"Ah." Cas cocked his head to the side as he listened to another verse.

He stayed like that for the entire drive, staring intently at the speaker as though he could see the words scrolling out of it, and looked almost disappointed when Charlie pulled into a parking spot and turned the car off.

* * *

Without the music to fill the gap of silence between them, lunch was a subdued affair. Charlie kept glancing up, trying to find some topic of conversation, but realized that everything she could talk about was even more alien to Cas than it would be to nearly any other human she could encounter. Cas would know nothing of L5R, Middle Earth, Lady Plainswalkers, Hogwarts, or the Enterprise. And what she did know about him was a somewhat awkward subject, her entire knowledge having come from novels that were supposed to be fictional.

"So," she finally said, gesturing with a french fry, "I see you've adopted the Winchester fall fashion line?"

Cas paused with his burger halfway to his mouth and looked down at his shirt. "I suppose? Dean gave me these clothes. I don't have anything else."

Charlie dropped her fry. "Seriously? They've never taken you out to get clothes for yourself?"

Shrugging, Cas returned to his burger. "They took me to get a suit for when we're on a case," he said inelegantly through a mouthful. "These suffice for all the other times."

Charlie blinked. "Please say you have your own underwear."

Cas continued chewing with an overly innocent expression that denoted the exact opposite.

Charlie facepalmed.

"New agenda," she proclaimed. "We're going to Target. We're getting you some clothes to call your own. At least underwear. And pants that fit. And some groceries, while we're there, because if we don't, you're all likely to starve."

* * *

Cas looked down at himself dubiously. "I don't see how this is different from what I was wearing before," he said.

"It fits, for one thing," Charlie pointed out. "Dean's got more shoulder and chest than you do. And while it's cute that you're wearing his clothes -" She stopped herself before she could continue that line of thought. "You don't look like a hobo," she finished as she gestured at Cas's reflection. "You look like you're wearing those clothes on purpose."

Plucking at the front of the shirt, Cas considered himself in the mirror. "I haven't even watched this film."

It took several moments for Charlie to regain the power of speech. "Dean has been neglecting his duties," she finally managed. "We're going to fix that as soon as we get back. I have them on my laptop. All three of them." She smiled slightly. "And then you can wear the shirt without guilt." She hesitated, then decided to throw caution to the wind. "I think Dean'll like it."

"Really?" Cas looked down at himself again, and Charlie grinned, mostly to herself. If that wasn't confirmation to all the subtext in the novels and all that she'd seen today, she didn't know what was.

"Really," she said, and the ghost of a smile in the mirror as Cas's eyes swept over his reflection again nearly made her want to do cartwheels.

* * *

Despite her enthusiasm for the concept, after a while, shopping for clothing is dull no matter what subject matter Charlie was working with. Cas seemed to share her opinion, far more interested in choosing between breakfast cereals than between boxers or briefs. The rest of their excursion was blessedly short, resulting in three bags of food-like items and one bag of various garments for Cas.

The car ride home threatened to be as devoid of conversation as the ride there, but as Charlie plugged in her iPod, Cas cleared his throat. "Can we listen to the first song again?"

Charlie blinked. "Did you like it?"

Flushing slightly, Cas looked down at his hands. "The lyrics were - yes. I did."

"All right." It didn't take long to find the song, and as Charlie pulled onto the freeway, she cranked the volume all the way, rolling down the windows to let the music twine with the late summer air.

It wasn't until she was singing along with the words that the lyrics actually struck her and nearly made her squeal.

_I'm overtaken in ways I've never known_  
_So please don't break me, we've still got a ways to go_  
_We're still holding on_  
_Just hoping for the best_  
_We may not make it out alive_  
_What does it matter if you're here by my side?_

Cas was smiling to himself as the last chord faded away, and met Charlie's eyes almost bashfully, as if he knew what she was thinking. He probably did; Charlie had not made any effort to be subtle. She was fairly certain that the wide grin on her face would be there for days, and she reached over and punched Cas in the arm. Cas's smile widened into a grin before looking back to the iPod. "So...Dean wouldn't like that song?"

Charlie raised an eyebrow. "Well," she said, stretching out the word, "if you were the one who played it for him...things might be a bit different. If you know what I mean."

Another glance told Charlie that Cas had turned a deep crimson. "Am I that obvious?"

"I have...inside information." Charlie cleared her throat. "You might have to be a little more obvious for Dean to catch on."

* * *

Charlie's car was still parked outside the Bunker; Dean pulled up behind it and shut off the engine. "Never again," he declared to Sam. "I don't care how many teenagers have gone missing. Never. Again."

"Agreed," Sam said fervently. "It's going to be days before I get the taste of oysters out of my mouth."

As Sam went around the back to get their duffels, Dean looked again at Charlie's car. "You think she even went home?"

Sam shrugged. "Probably? We were gone for three days."

Dean shut his eyes. "Don't remind me. Cas is going to be pissed."

"He's not like a cat," Sam said, amused, shouldering his duffel bag and handing the other to Dean.

The Bunker was dark as they pushed open the heavy front door, but decidedly not quiet, despite the late hour. Dean listened for a moment. "What the... No. No way." He let the duffel bag drop to the floor with a thunk as he strode in the direction of the very familiar music emanating from the library.

...where, on the projector plugged into Charlie's laptop, Princess Leia was awarding medals to Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Chewbacca.

Cas twisted in his chair, a smile the likes of which Dean had never seen spread across his face. "Dean. This is better than _porn_."

Dean could swear that he could hear Charlie murmur something that sounded suspiciously like "that's my boy."

"What exactly have you done to him?" Dean asked, but there was too much amusement in his voice for it to be a true demand.

"Watched Star Wars," Charlie answered with too much innocence for it to be real. She looked guiltily at the screen. "Four times."

Cas spun excitedly in his chair and Dean was able to take full inventory of the scene. He closed his eyes. "Cas. Where did you get a Star Wars tee shirt?"

"Target," Cas responded in his usual deadpan. "And I have boxers that match."

Dean blinked as Charlie snorted with laughter. "Why did I need to know that?" he asked of no one in particular, but not before his eyes inexplicably flicked down to the waistband of Cas's jeans - why? In hopes he might see them? Dean was not interested in Cas's under...things. At all.

"We're about to start Empire," Charlie said, hand hovering over the touchpad of her laptop, "which is Cas's favorite. Would you like to join us?"

"Hell yes." He pulled out a chair next to Cas and flopped into it.

It wasn't until the opening crawl was almost over that he saw that Charlie and Cas were sharing a very significant look, and that Charlie was mouthing a word that looked like "obvious" while Cas looked puzzled. Now Charlie was jerking her head towards Dean, who immediately returned his eyes to the screen -

And nearly jumped out of his skin when Cas unceremoniously draped his arm over the back of Dean's chair.

"Look at the time," Charlie chirped, "Gotta run - be back tomorrow - keep the laptop for tonight - _Sam I need to show you something I found in the kitchen yes the kitchen not the library_."

* * *

Charlie was a little crestfallen the next day when she arrived to learn that Cas was still asleep. She set to that day's box of treasures with a will, however, and when Dean wandered in to help it took every ounce of self-control to not demand every single detail from him. This was a fragile thing, possibly still so frail that putting words to it would make it collapse.

But when Dean leaned over to pick up a box and she saw the STAR WARS waistband peek out from the waist of his jeans, she had a fair indication of how the evening had gone after she'd left.

"That's my boy," she murmured to herself with a smile.

"What's that?"

"Nothing."


End file.
